Calling all vegans

Britain's Co-op stores may not be the most glamorous supermarkets in the land but they are the most active in giving their customers maximum information, and that includes ingredient labeling in wines. Back labels on bottles of the Co-op's own label wines at the Co-op are far, far more explicit than anyone else's and I believe are the precedent for what will become the norm.

It's probably not surprising then that the Vegan Society have given the Co-op's vegan wine range their Best Drink award at the 2006 Vegan Society AGM on Saturday. The Co-op explicitly labels appropriate own-label products as "suitable for vegans," indeed all the wines listed below can be drunk by vegans, those who eschew animal products of all sorts, so not just meat and fish but also milk, cheese, eggs and so on. All sorts of fining materials - casein, isinglass, gelatin - are therefore out of the question and indeed the vegan and vegetarian movements have had a hand in the current tendency to use these organic fining agents less in favour of the likes of bentonite. Bad news for vegans is that of course all those top quality wines fined by egg whites or albumen are out.

Not that the vegan movement seems particularly widespread in Western Australia. Michael Kerrigan, winemaker at Howard Park, was in London recently talking about his experiences labelling Tesco's Tingleup Riesling. "Vegans? What the **** are they supposed to be? I'm supposed to make wines and labels specially for them?"